Riding a yellow school bus to elementary schools across the city, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Bob Hertzberg sought Tuesday to put his plan to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District at the center of the race.
"As mayor, I certainly want to improve the job conditions, reduce crime, and I want to reduce traffic. But ... I start with the issue of education because it is so fundamental to all of us," Hertzberg said, standing outside an East Los Angeles school.
Hertzberg is not the first politician to propose dismantling the nation's second-largest school district, whose record of failure has long made it one of the city's most embattled institutions. But with three news conferences Tuesday and new details about his plan to create neighborhood-based districts, Hertzberg has gone further than any other major candidate to inject the schools into the contest.
As he fights to distinguish himself from Mayor James K. Hahn's other challengers, Hertzberg is increasingly staking his political future on discontent with the schools, particularly in his political base in the voter-rich San Fernando Valley.
On Tuesday, former Mayor Richard Riordan, who made improving the schools a top priority of his administration, said in an interview with The Times that he favors Hertzberg's plan. Riordan is now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's education secretary, but he stressed that he was not speaking for the governor.
Hertzberg's four main rivals, including Hahn, have given the proposal a cool reception. At last week's debate, the mayor scoffed at Hertzberg's plan and touted city-funded after-school programs as a more constructive way to help schools.
Supt. Roy Romer and the powerful teachers union also have dismissed the breakup proposal, which has been advocated unsuccessfully by a shifting array of Los Angeles communities and politicians since the Watts riots nearly 40 years ago.
"This is going to be made into a political football," Romer said last week after Hertzberg unveiled his plan. "We ought not to hurt the kids for somebody's political advantage."
But Hertzberg, who did not consult Romer before he proposed the breakup, appears undeterred. In the past week, he has stepped up his campaign, arguing that although the mayor does not have a direct role in the city's public schools, he has a duty to use the office to push sweeping reform.
